TDCorp territory (Otéagu) cultural test
If you are from TDCorp territory... * You believe that hard work leads to success, and that progress is your birthright. * You take the two TDC slogans, "To get rich is glorious" and "Greed is good" very seriously. You admire those that have made a fortune, and those who live practically, although parsimoniousness has become less important as things get better. * You easily talk to others in any of 4 languages: Ingallish, Sanpatrician, Rizne and Mixtupteca. * Your name has one (or at the most two) first names, and invariably both your parents' last names, in the Sanpatrician tradition. However, when introducing yourself, you use one first name and one last name, the ones you like more and that you chose since childhood. These names will be the same all your life, because changing them involves changing your school and work history, and that is a headache. If you come from Welfenia in the west, you use a hyphen between your last names when you write them. * You are polite with strangers, but direct and to the point, and you engage in debates and discussions with gusto, and consider it highly suspect if people fall silent or hide their opinions. You are proud of your ability to haggle and negotiate, and read all there is written to improve it. There are almost no taboo topics for you, and most of these have to do with what you know Zartanians don't like, and only because you consider them almost brothers. You have a devilish ability to make jokes and double-entendres out of EVERYTHING, and with 4 languages at your disposal, nobody and nothing on the Vex is safe or sacred. * You are an urban creature and consider nature to be something pretty that you go visit on your holidays or with Zartanian or Westrian friends that like going out to the countryside. You have visited both the Central Jungle and Mestonia Park, and the Afrazure Reserves out west, but are much happier in the hustle and bustle of the coastal metropolises. If you come from Welfenia, however, all this is reversed; your upbringing in the still sparsely inhabited west makes you much more appreciative of open spaces and green glades, and you find Chilangotitlán a little too oppressively full of people. ''If you were born in the northern desert, you regard people who worry about changes in temperature as weak whiners, but you always carry an umbrella because you hate rain. '' * You love traveling, and make full use of the transport infrastructure both in the Territory and in the neighboring countries; you usually begin to travel outside the territory when you are 13 or 14 years old, mainly to San Patricio and the Burovian dependencies. By the time you're 20, you will have gone to Zartania and Chungxiang at least, and visited all of Melania including Porto Capital. * You are used to equality between the genders, and to women being better students; schools teach overachievement regardless of gender, and society expects women to find their career path and to delay childbearing until university studies are concluded and the first two jobs have been successfully obtained. You find the customs of your San Patrician relatives quite quaint, but not useful in modern society, and the customs of the more patriarchal Vexillian societies fully incomprehensible: Why would they waste half their human capital? Food and drink... * Alcohol is your dear friend; voluntary abstinence is respected, but very rare, and you assume that abstinence is a result of a temporary doctor's order. You drink a variety of spirits, from Sanpatrician Xtabentün to St. Kildan usqebáugh (most likely a Welfenian product) and your own, fiery xiuhatl and metlazcalli. Beer is one of the Territory's specialties, and you can find every variety brewed on the Vex, also in alcohol-free versions for the workweek. Soft drinks have declined in popularity since the new brewing processes made alcohol-free beer more palatable, and it is usual to have alcohol-free beer on tap at workplace canteens. Women are expected to drink and hold their drink every bit as much as men. Wine is the drink of choice for work or personal celebrations, but it is not considered a daily drink unless you are of almost pure St. Kiltan ancestry. * Bars and pubs cater to a variety of traditions: you find Gorami-style beer gardens very attractive, especially on the coast, and like to go to a different-themed pub each night during the weekend. You can bring your own food to the beer gardens, but you are expected to order your beer from the operators. * Non-alcoholic beer is your "soft drink" of choice, although Westrian-made soft drinks or San Patrician aguas frescas (cold, fruit-flavored sweet punches) will do in a pinch. There are non-alcoholic malt drinks for children, marketed as much for their nutritional value as for their taste. * You normally eat 2-3 times a day, and will skip breakfast or eat it on the way to work, which makes for a very light meal. Lunch and dinner are either hurried affairs before you get back to work, or protracted business occasions where mobiles are laid on the center of the table and put on flight mode as a sigh of courtesy. Family dinners are a weekly or biweekly affair, and have to be programmed in advance. * Street food is one of your proudest traditions, and you will have a list of favorite places you go to with your friends and your foreign visitors. Eating at home is only practiced on weekends in the smaller towns, and in the desert in summer, when the temperatures go above 50 degrees. Given the extraordinary variety of animals and plants eaten, you will ask your foreign friends if their religions or sensibilities agree with the menu before going out. Street stands and some restaurants open all day long to cater to partygoers and late diners. * Cuisine in the Territory is extraordinarily eclectic, and clearly distinguishable by regions: Desert, Chilango, Southern, and the Gorami/Vinnish and St. Kiltan branches of Western. Chilango is heavily San Patrician-influenced, with lots of sauces and jungle ingredients; Southern resembles Chilango, but has taken its own path to more elaborate dishes and much hotter chilies; Desert features grilled meats and cactus shoots, Gorami/Vinnish is famous for its sausages and cured meats, and St. Kildan for its lamb dishes. The unifying strand among all the regions is the unfailing presence of rye and wheat bread in the Gorami tradition and the round, flat tlaxcalli of the Mixtupteca, in white, yellow and bright blue colors. * Any and all plants and animals are fair game; the Territory is one of the few places in the Vex where insects are part of the daily diet, and you will find fried or toasted beasties sold in street stands, food stores and supermarkets. Fish, fowl, the usual meat animals, especially Welfenian lamb, plus tepexcuintle (a jungle rodent), carpinxo (its bigger cousin from the San Patrician plains) and invertebrate seafood round out the offers. Restaurants and the bigger street stands will have alternative menus for foreigners and allergic persons. * Milk is drunk by all children (lactose intolerance is almost unknown due to the St. Kildan, Gorami and Vinnish genes in the population) and is always kept cold as a last-resort remedy against angry cooks (Southern miner tradition has it that angry cooks make the hottest sauces). Alternative milks from vegetable sources are made in the Territory and exported, but find few local takers. Sports * You are fully convinced that sport is second only to work in importance, and regard life without sport as unfit to live. * You live and die by your football (soccer) team's results, and actually get depressed if they lose, and look forward to a Monday of unlimited ribbing by your co-workers who root for other teams with abject terror. Of course, if they win, the whole week is a succession of bright moments, and a championship is celebrated with wild abandon and rivers of beer. You OF COURSE have your team's logo somewhere on your workplace, and your boss is totally OK with it; having your team´s flag on a pole in your balcony is common, and even little altars can be expected. You usually choose your team when you are a child, and remain faithful all your life; changing teams is frowned upon. If you are older than 25, you usually have a "home" and a "Zartanian" team you root for, remembering your years in the GZE. * You follow both big motorsport organizations, and cheer for local and Zartanian teams, or, less frequently, for Westrian ones. Women are expected to know as much detail about motorsports as men, and the average woman in the Territory will at least know how to change spark plugs or a broken belt in a modern automobile. You will debate passionately about mechanical and strategic topics at bars or between friends, but in the end you will agree that driving fast is one of the finest things on the Vex. * You have something pink in your workplace or your closet. * You have a treasured, 8-year-old, much-washed, much-loved plushie Balam (jungle cat) that no one can throw away on pain of being publicly shamed and excluded from polite society. It will probably not be the only one, but it is the first, and it is your "lucky" one. * You remember for the rest of your life where you were in the early summer of 308, and you will tell everyone what happened in Ixihuepetl at that time. If you were at the track, it is very likely that you either auctioned off your ticket for a lot of Varos or that you still have it, framed, hung in a place of honor in your house. You bring out a bottle of Xtabentün and drink a little toast to Bruno and Tatic, every year. * You of course know what "YA'AX XIBALBÁ" means. * You have something red in your workplace or your closet, most likely a football jersey * You remember for the rest of your life where you were in the summer of 305, and where you saw the match against the Deucolands, and how long it took to get your voice back. And you will tell everyone, local or foreign, many times. * If you were born in or near the borough of Iztacalco in Chilangotitlán, you put it on your CV and you tell everyone that being a Chilango is something to be proud of, and that being from Iztacalco is a gift from the gods. Politics and economics... *You think the Company (the usual name for TDCorp) is the best thing since hot tlaxcalin, and wonder about other countries that actually force their citizens to give money to the government instead of earning some Varos for them. *You expect everyone to be open and honest, but also expect control mechanisms to be set up; "Every pig is tempted by an open trough". *You expect goods and services to be provided by private companies, and firmly believe that competition delivers better service and lower prices; you are taught the basic principles of economics at a young age, and expect monopolies to be watched over and eventually broken either by market forces or by the Company. *You understand that other countries have varying degrees of government intervention in their economies, but see it as a consequence of prejudice, not as a logical decision. *You are politically engaged, to the surprise of your foreign friends, who expect you to be naive and apathetic. You participate in corporate forums, join interest groups, and spend a good deal of time debating all kinds of issues on weekends. Foreign politics, especially in the GBR, also holds your interest. *You have a special closeness with Zartanians, and will often argue in favor of the Empire's position in a strong manner, even more so than Zartanians themselves, who tend to be more reserved. *You support the Company's intervention in other countries, especially if it is a humanitarian mission; the acknowledged expertise of the TDCorp Medical Division is a point of pride. Race, religion and language... * You speak 4 languages by the time you are through with elementary education: Ingallish, Rizne, Mixtupteca, and Sanpatrician. * You learned your Mixtupteca at home and with your friends, with formal reinforcements in school, and it is very related to the Mixtupteca spoken in San Patricio, although words can have different meanings. If you are really well off, you learned your Mixtupteca from your Sanpatrician nanny. * You learned Sanpatrician at home and in school, but the actual accent and wording of your spoken and written Sanpatrician depends on where you live; the Chilango dialect is instantly distinguishable, and some barrios (boroughs) of Chilangotitlán are famous for having almost indecipherable local variants. * You learned your Ingallish and your Rizne at school or working in Zartania, and your parents spoke to you in both to give you a leg up in adult life. * You can read Rizne script as fast as Liliani, and you find the fact that there are monolingual people quite funny. * If you were born in Welfenia, you probably can speak good Gorami or Vinnish, which you learned at home. * You can swear a blue streak in any of 4 languages by the time you're 13, and your fame as a potty-mouth and equal-opportunity offender goes beyond the Territory's borders; many free beers are given to you so that foreigners can hear their languages used in ways their more conservative societies would never imagine. * Religion is a delicate subject for you. Schools teach all about the War of the Gods (the bloody civil war when the Chilangos were expelled from old Xochimechatlan by the united Theocracies) and that has left you with a notable skepticism regarding all claims to absolute truth. You consider non-sport-related ritual and deities a nonissue, and adhere to the Corporation's opinion: "Respect all, believe in none". * You find the more aggressive branches of Cruisianism a bit annoying, and support SECDIV keeping and eye on all kinds of religious extremism. * Race is held to be a historic superstition; only a very few people can say their ancestors come from any one ethnic group, and the constant affirmation of the "we're all green" credo since earliest childhood reinforces the legacy of constant mixing between Goramis, Vinns, St. Kiltans and Chilangos. You are aware of racism in other countries, but you normally laugh off any racist gestures or overt hostility. Everyone knows that... * Dates are day/month/year BP/AP, and you know the year both AP and Zartanian. * It's a comma for thousands, and a point for decimals, but you aren't fazed by seeing it used the other way * Temperatures are in good old centigrade, longitudes in meters, and liquid in liters (especially beer mugs!) * You think that... * There's nothing wrong with marriage; it's a contract like any other, and it can be made between a man and a woman, two men, two women, or even more than two, although those who do really have a lot of free time! * There's nothing wrong with divorce, either, as long as everyone's a good businessperson about it. Please, no long Utanian dramas. * Space and time... * You like the big blue sky... but at best seen with some buildings as landscape complement. * Punctuality is the businessperson's jewel; 5 minutes before the agreed time is usually the goal, 5 minutes late (unannounced) merits an apology, and 15 minutes late is unthinkable; if something happens, your counterparty MUST be warned beforehand. Trains and planes list early and late times in seconds. * Chilangotitlán is the city that never, EVER sleeps. Your foreign friends will ask you in wonderment when exactly do you manage to shut an eye. The funny thing is that the same frenetic pace will be found in the comparatively small Welfenian cities. * Hey! Look! Furriners! Yaaaaay! * Zartanians are your serious big brothers, until they drink 3-4 beers; then they are funny, gangly big brothers who tell droll jokes and can't dance * San Patricians are a lot of everything; they drink a lot, dance a lot, talk a lot, party a lot, work a lot (unless they are in San Patricio, where they do sleep a lot). * Kalisth'zyrans are funny country cousins, but they are getting up to speed quite quickly. * Deucos and Westrians are funny, brash, and good to do business with; Westria is your third favorite foreign place to live, after Chungxiang and Zartania * The Chungese are funny, work hard, and are a challenge to haggle with; their only defect is that they can't hold their drink. They also are the only ones who really understand what REAL big cities are like. * Portocapitalians are real fun to be with, even if one talks politics with them; usually everything ends with more drinks and good friendship. * Arosians are like your little brothers; They do everything you do, and make you feel good when they say you rock. * Utanians make very good films, some so-so music, and are good at cursing, even when they are cursing you (which is quite often). Also, only one of them is whiny, as we all know. * Samuelonians are the good friends you just found across the Vex (who knew? Cheers!) * Fenizians were cool until some of them forgot their dishdashas and the sun fried their brains and made them think they could beat the whole Vex in a fight. But then, Longerath's always been Longerath... * Solelhadans are reeeeal fun, duuuude! Even though they always make sour faces when they see a TDC service card/passport * Anybody who's a Commie can be expected to be a sourpuss, unless you work for a Landa company, in which case they're the incarnation of Evil and an instant target for merciless ribbing. * And, of course, nothing personal, but... CA CA CABOTENIASA! CA CA CABOTENIASA! CA CA CABOTENIASA! Category:Cultural tests